“Prince Pikus,” Kirke called out to the disembarking sailors. “Prince Pikus?”
One of the men craned his neck at her call, then hopped over a pile of ropes and trotted up beside her. He had a slight beard and his dark hair hung about his face in wild, sea-swept curls. “A Heliad, eh? I thought this polis ruled by Kroniads. Not that I have complaints about the company, my lady.” He had a thick, pleasant accent that made her want to listen to him recite poetry or argue philosophy.
Kirke quirked a smile. That was presumptuous. “Kroniads do rule here, but I am kin to the Olympian Athene, and she sent me to greet you while she was … uh, attending to matters of state.” Her state, at least.
Pikus flashed a grin. “Her loss and my gain, I suppose.” Well, rather proud of himself, wasn’t he?
Kirke motioned him to follow and guided him through the harbor, wending around the bustling crowd loading and unloading. Did this place seem chaotic compared to Mnemosynia? Rassenia seemed so far removed from the politics of Elládos she couldn’t help but think of it as rural, though the last she had seen the Rassenian city—a stopover when visiting her father’s holdings in Thrinakia—it had become a sprawling metropolis.
“You are kin to the Muses, yes?”
“Distant aunts, yes. They are to me, I mean, not I to them.” Again, that flash of white teeth and overflowing confidence.
Kirke snickered. “I met them, years ago, in Themiskyra.”
The prince sniffed at that. “Ah, hmm. We do not speak of them much, you know. I think Great-grandmother has not forgiven them for going there.”
Oh, well, that was awkward. Kirke snapped her mouth shut lest any other social gaffes spring forth and take flight.
After that, she restricted herself to pointing out the few interesting city buildings in the district. The harbormaster’s office, some warehouses held by various branches of the Kroniad aristoi, and the Griffin’s Beak, a wine house that local legend claimed had served Kronos himself, though that was almost certainly a lie, as the wood would have rotted to naught centuries back.
“I could do with a cup of wine,” she admitted, gauging his interest.
Pikus perked up at the mention of it, and so she led him into the wine house. The owner, Eutychios, nodded at her in recognition as she slipped onto a stool at her usual table. Few women came here, save whores and hetairai, but the establishment knew Kirke as kin to Athene and thus offered her steep discounts.
Pikus settled down across from her. “I don’t suppose they have Rassenian vintages?”
Kirke snorted. “Yeah, I think for those we’ll have to raid Athene’s own stocks. Uh, but they’ve got some Argosian reds worth a sip or three, let me tell you.”
The serving girls kept the bowls flowing while Pikus spoke of his far-off home. As a demigod, he was older than he looked, though he had naught on Kirke’s long centuries of experience.
“Wait, you lived through the Titanomachy?” he gasped when she mentioned it offhand.
Kirke cast him a wistful look over the wine bowl at her lips. “I was in Helion, mostly, yeah. I remember when Artemis came and convinced Father to side with Zeus.” Such was hard to forgive, especially as it had earned Artemis and her twin a place on Olympus. So self-serving.
Pikus laughed at even her most puerile humor, seeming to drink in her every tale.
In the end, they were so drunk she could barely keep her stool, sputtering from laughter, and tipsy enough the room had begun to sway like the ocean. Deciding they had best save the rest of the tour for the next day, she led him to the palace where the steward granted him a room.
Kirke passed out the moment she found her own chamber.
All the next day they laughed and drank, and she showed him the acropolis and the ever-expanding agora. She took him through the markets, and they sampled Illyrian wines, which he liked more than the Elládosi ones, and Phrygian ones, which he claimed tasted of donkey piss.
He had taken to calling her ‘princess,’ too, and every time it sent jitters running through her.
In the end, maybe that was why she did it. Maybe hearing anyone address her thus once more, after long centuries of being a mere Nymph, had left her giddy as a child. Or maybe it was that she simply hadn’t had a lover in over a decade. Certainly, Kalypso did not return her letters, and few others understood her.
Loneliness was a word easily understood intellectually, but it ran deeper than words or thoughts. It was an insidious undertow that could suck one beneath the ocean in a moment and hold a person there for what felt an eternity.
Or maybe it was that they had stopped in a wine house for three bowls of wine on an empty stomach.
Regardless, as they strolled the Colonnades, she laced her fingers in Pikus’s with the impetuousness of her youth. And when he raised a brow and she ought to have broken off, still she persisted.
“My father remains lord of many lands, even still, and wealthy beyond measure. A marriage to one of his daughters could bring great weal to the House of Mnemosyne. And, you know, I’d be happy to take up life in Rassenia.” Away from Athene and her madness and addiction. Living a few decades in happiness with the prince could be just what she needed—and give her a home as far removed from Zeus as possible.
Pikus’s dashing smile morphed into an arrogant smirk. “Ah, yes, but not half so prestigious as a union with a child of the Olympians, now, is it? I mean, truly, do you think you buy a prince with a few drachmae and a pretty face?”
Kirke flinched from his mockery, struggling to even process his
